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Clarence Thomas Biography

Born: June 23, 1948
Pin Point, Georgia
American Supreme Court justice

President George Bush (1924–) named Clarence Thomas to the U.S.
Supreme Court in 1991. Since joining the Court, Thomas—the second
African American to serve on the court—has often voted with the
more conservative justices.

Georgia childhood

Clarence Thomas was born in the tiny coastal town of Pin Point, Georgia,
on June 23, 1948. As a very young boy he lived in a one-room shack with
dirt floors and no plumbing. When Thomas was two years old, his father
walked out on the family. As a result, at the age of seven he and his
younger brother were sent to live with their grandfather, Myers
Anderson, and his wife in Savannah, Georgia. Anderson, a devout Catholic
and active member of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP), sent Thomas to a Catholic school staffed by
nuns.

In remarks reported by
Jet
magazine, Thomas has said that he grew up speaking Gullah, a creole
dialect spoken by African Americans on the coastal islands of the
southeastern United States. Unlike other Supreme Court justices, he
rarely asks questions from the bench during court proceedings. He has
said that he developed this habit of silent listening when he was young
because he found it a struggle to speak "standard

Clarence Thomas.
Courtesy of the

Supreme Court of the United States

.

English" correctly in school. Nevertheless, he was always a
strong student.

In 1964 Thomas's grandfather withdrew him from the all-black
religious high school he was attending and sent him to an all-white
Catholic boarding school in Savannah. Despite being confronted with
racism (a dislike or disrespect of a person based on his or her race),
Thomas made excellent grades and played on the school's football
team. Thomas's grandfather next sent him to Immaculate Conception
Seminary (a place for religious education) in northwestern Missouri
after his graduation from high school in 1967. Although Thomas was not
the only African American student, he still was troubled by poor race
relations. A racist remark he overheard about the assassination of
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) caused him to decide that he
would not become a priest.

Turning to the law

Thomas left the seminary and enrolled at Holy Cross, a college in
Worcester, Massachusetts. There he was a devoted student who also
participated on the track team, did volunteer work in the community, and
helped found the Black Student Union at Holy Cross. He also met Kathy
Ambush, whom he married after graduating in 1971. The couple had one
son, but divorced in 1984. (Thomas married his second wife, Virginia
Lamp, in 1987.)

Thanks to his excellent academic record, Thomas was admitted to the law
schools at Yale, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania. He chose
Yale because of the financial support it offered him as part of its
affirmative action policy to attract students from racial and ethnic
minorities. At Yale he continued to do well academically, and he
appeared to fit in socially as well. Yet, years later, he described his
"rage" and loneliness at feeling snubbed by white people
who viewed him as someone who could only attend Yale through an
affirmative action program.

First government posts

Thomas graduated from Yale law school in 1974 and accepted a position on
the staff of Missouri's Republican attorney general, John
Danforth (1936–). In 1979 he moved to Washington, D.C., and
became a legislative assistant to Danforth on the condition that he not
be assigned to civil rights issues. His
resentment toward some aspects of affirmative action, combined with his
grandfather's lessons on self-sufficiency and independence, had
moved Thomas into a circle of African American conservatives.

Thomas's conservative ideas soon brought him to the attention of
the presidential administration of Ronald Reagan (1911–). In 1981
Thomas was appointed assistant secretary for civil rights in the U.S.
Department of Education. Thomas openly stated that minority groups must
succeed by their own merit. He asserted that affirmative action programs
and civil rights legislation do not improve living standards.

In 1982 Thomas became the chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which was designed to enforce laws
against discrimination (unequal treatment based on age, disability,
nationality, race, religion, or sex) in the workplace. Thomas served two
consecutive terms as chairman, despite having previously sworn he would
never work at the EEOC.

Supreme Court nomination

In 1990 President George Bush (1924–) appointed Thomas to the
Washington, D.C., circuit of the United States Court of Appeals, a
common stepping stone to the Supreme Court. Thomas served on this court
for only one year. Despite this relatively limited experience, Bush
nominated Thomas to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Thurgood
Marshall (1908–1993) on July 1, 1991.

Senate hearings to confirm Thomas's nomination appeared to be
moving along smoothly until allegations by Anita Hill, a former EEOC
employee, were made public. On October 8, Hill held a press conference
in which she made public the main points of testimony she previously had
given the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Protests by some
women's groups led the Senate confirmation committee to publicly
review Hill's charges.

Anita Hill's charges

Hill charged that while she worked at the EEOC nearly a decade earlier
Thomas pestered her for dates and told stories in her presence about
pornographic film scenes and his own sexual ability. Hill claimed that
Thomas's actions made it difficult for her to do her job and
caused physical distress. Nevertheless, she continued to contact Thomas
voluntarily even after he helped arrange for her appointment as a law
professor at the University of Oklahoma.

Hill, Thomas, and witnesses on both sides testified about the
allegations during the televised confirmation hearings, which were among
the most widely viewed political events in television history. Thomas
denied any wrongdoing. He remarked that the process had been a harrowing
personal ordeal for him and his wife. Referring to the acts of violence
by which whites had terrorized blacks in the American South in which he
grew up, Thomas characterized the televised hearings as a
"high-tech lynching." In the end, Thomas was confirmed by
a 52-48 margin, the smallest—according to
Time
magazine—by which any justice has been confirmed in the past
century.

Hill's allegations helped to make sexual harassment a major
political issue. The phrase itself had varying and even conflicting
definitions. Nevertheless, local, state, and national laws were passed
to stop workplace
practices that could make other employees uncomfortable. Meanwhile,
articles and books continued to debate whether Hill's specific
charges against Thomas were valid.

The quiet justice

After joining the Supreme Court, Thomas voted frequently with Justice
Antonin Scalia (1936–) and Chief Justice William Rehnquist
(1924–), thereby siding with the court's leading
conservatives (people who resist change and prefer to keep traditions).
Although generally silent during oral arguments at court proceedings,
Thomas has been visible in his opinion writing from the beginning.
Reviewers of his legal essays and opinions (the written arguments by
which court justices explain the reasons for their ruling or their
disagreement with the ruling) agree that they are clear, well
researched, and consistent. However, African American political groups
criticized Thomas for maintaining his conservative values in cases
affecting minorities.

For the first few years after his appointment, Thomas tended to keep a
low public profile. Starting in 1996, however, he began to make
occasional appearances before conservative political groups. Since the
election of George W. Bush (1946–) as president in 2000, he has
been increasingly hailed as a judicial hero by American conservatives.

User Contributions:

This article is well written. I have read about Justice Thomas in the past and have always admired him for his achievements. I never gave any credit to affirmament action because if you read about Clarence's grandfather raising the boy, he has earned every respect shown him. His grandfather was a no nonsense kind of man that gave a lot, but expected a lot. Also most of us whites have never suffered from racism. It is dispicable and beneath any respectful person.

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